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Turkey-Syria Earthquake Death Toll Passes 11,000

Turkey-Syria earthquake death toll passes 11,000

(CTN NEWS) – GAZIANTEP, Turkey – In Turkey and Syria, exhausted rescue crews worked through the night looking for signs of life in the wreckage of thousands of buildings destroyed by a devastating earthquake.

In the deadliest earthquake to hit the world in more than ten years, the death toll increased to above 11,000 on Wednesday.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited a “tent city” in Kahramanmaras, where people who had to leave their homes are residing, amid appeals for the Turkish government to deliver additional aid to the disaster area.

Early in the statement, he acknowledged shortcomings but promised that nobody would “be abandoned in the streets.”

Rescue workers search for survivors on a collapsed building in Malatya, Turkey, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

Tens of thousands of local rescue workers have been joined by search teams from more than two dozen nations, and assistance donations have flooded in worldwide.

However, many people still need assistance due to the 7.8 magnitude earthquake’s extensive damage and widespread distribution, which included areas cut off by Syria’s ongoing civil war.

According to retired journalist Ozel Pikal, who witnessed eight victims being removed from a building’s wreckage in the Turkish city of Malatya, the remains were placed side by side on the ground, covered in blankets, while rescuers waited for funeral trucks to pick them up.

As temperatures dropped to minus 6 degrees Celsius, Pikal, who assisted with the rescue efforts, said he thinks some of the victims may have frozen to death (21 Fahrenheit).

There is now no hope in Malatya. Therefore, Pikal told the AP that today wasn’t a good day. “No one is surviving the debris alive.”

Women cry as they watch while the emergency teams search for people in the rubble of a destroyed building in Adana, Turkey, Monday, Feb. 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

According to Pikal, a hotel structure in the city has fallen, and more than a hundred people may be trapped within.

He claimed that there was a lack of rescuers in the region he was in and that government teams and volunteer rescuers were both hindered by the cold in their attempts.

Mobility and access have also been hampered in the area by road closures and damage.

The cold prevents our hands from picking up anything, stated Pikal. “Working tools are required.”

The suffering was shocking in a region already affected by a civil conflict in Syria that has lasted more than ten years and forced millions of people to flee their homes and seek safety in Turkey.

It was unclear how many people might still be trapped beneath the wreckage after hundreds of buildings collapsed.

The disaster management organization in Turkey reported that 8,500 people had died there.

South Korean rescue team members prepare to board a plane for quake-ravaged Turkey at the Incheon International Airport in Incheon, South Korea, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

According to the Syrian Health Ministry, over 1,200 people have perished in government-held areas, while the White Helmets, a group of volunteer first responders, estimate at least 1,400 fatalities in the northwest, which is controlled by rebels.

Since the earthquake and several powerful aftershocks on Monday, there have been 11,000 total fatalities. There are tens of thousands more injuries.

Nearly 20,000 people perished in a tsunami caused by an earthquake that occurred in 2011 close to Japan.

Pope Francis requested prayers and acts of solidarity after the “devastating” earthquake during his weekly general audience, but neither Turkey nor Syria gave figures for the number of persons still missing.

According to Syrian officials, the Bab al-Hawa border crossing was used to return the bodies of more than 100 Syrians who perished during the earthquake in Turkey for burial.

Twenty more bodies were on their way to the border, according to Mazen Alloush, an officer on the Syrian side of the border, who also noted that they were all Syrian refugees who had left their country’s civil war.

Mourners pray over coffins of family members who died in a devastating earthquake that rocked Syria and Turkey at a cemetery in the town of Jinderis, Aleppo province, Syria, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

Polish rescuers operating in Turkey claimed they had so far retrieved nine people alive from the rubble, including parents with two children and a 13-year-old girl from the ruins in the city of Besni. However, concerns are growing for those remaining trapped.

They agreed that the cold weather was working against them, but two firefighters told Polish TVN24 that some may have benefited from being trapped in bed with warm covers during the early-morning earthquake.

Currently, the rescuers are attempting to approach a woman they know is lying in bed.

Arif Kaan, 3, was rescued from beneath the debris of a collapsed apartment building in Kahramanmaras, which is not far from the epicentre, nearly two days after the earthquake.

Emergency personnel covered the boy’s torso with a blanket as they gently hacked the rubble away from him, cautious of the potential of causing another collapse, with the child’s left leg stuck under the concrete slabs and bent rebar.

Emergency team members search for people in a destroyed building in Adana, Turkey, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Ertugrul Kisi, the boy’s father, who had previously been rescued, sobbed as his son was freed and loaded into an ambulance.

“Arif Kaan is currently the name of hope in Kahramanmaras,” a Turkish television reporter exclaimed as the dramatic rescue was televised nationwide.

A few hours later, rescuers in Adiyaman found 10-year-old Betul Edis trapped beneath her home’s debris. Her grandfather kissed her and spoke sweetly to her as she was loaded onto an ambulance, drawing cheers from the crowd.

A wailing newborn was discovered on Monday afternoon in a town in the northwest of Syria, still attached to her dead mother by the umbilical cord.

According to family members who spoke to The Associated Press, the newborn was the only member of her family to survive a building collapse in the little village of Jinderis.

A baby girl born under the rubble caused by an earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey receives treatment inside an incubator at a children’s hospital in the town of Afrin, Aleppo province, Syria, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023.(AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

The pre-dawn earthquake on Monday, which struck a vast area, toppled thousands of structures, and complicated rescue efforts with icy temperatures and continued tremors, produced few such stories more than two days later.

In Turkey, many survivors were forced to spend the night in their cars, outside, or in public shelters.

“We lack all, even a tent and a stove for heating. Our kids are in poor health. Aysan Kurt, 27, told the AP, “We are all getting soaked in the rain, and our kids are out in the cold. We won’t escape the cold; we can’t survive hunger or the earthquake.”

Aid attempts in Syria have been hindered by the ongoing conflict and the segregation of the rebel-held border region, encircled by government forces backed by Russia.

As a result of Western sanctions related to the conflict, Syria has become a global pariah.

Major fault lines run through the area, which frequently experiences earthquakes. Similarly, strong earthquakes that struck northwest Turkey in 1999 claimed over 18,000 lives.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

google

Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

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Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

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Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

trump

Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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